Health
It’s time to break out the fenders. As last week’s balmy weather changes to winter rain, people who rely on their bikes have to switch gears, sometimes literally, and prepare for drenched roads and clothes.
Four three-foot high barrels resembling oversized soup cans sit at Spice Monkey Café and Restaurant in downtown Oakland. Each is emblazoned with photos of smiling children and has “Donate Food Here!” stamped across the black and red label. One barrel is filled with nonperishable canned goodies. Another is half full. And two are completely empty.
It was barely 3 p.m. at Hoover Elementary School in West Oakland, and the strawberries at the Tuesday farmers’ market were almost sold out. Hoover is just one of 25 schools part of “Oakland Fresh,” a recent OUSD effort aimed at providing fresh, locally grown organic produce for parents to purchase when they pick their students up from school.
Thanks to a $4 million grant from the California State Parks Department, which City Slicker Farms was awarded on November 8, the parcel will soon be transformed into a community farm and park. Although the department allows organizations up to eight years to get their programs established, Finnin estimates that City Slicker Farms will break ground for the community farm at the end of 2011.
Over the past 15 years Oakland has become the the epicenter of a national conversation about the legalization, taxation and regulation of marijuana. How did this happen? It started with the coalescing of an open-minded city council, an impoverished downtown, and a handful of determined activists.
About 200 people attended the long delayed launch celebration for the Africa Channel-a digital station that focuses entirely on Africa programming- Tuesday night at Oakland’s Chabot Space Center. At the event, an Africa Channel executive announced the results of DNA tests revealing the ancestries of three African-American attendees.
At nighttime along Oakland’s International Boulevard, dozens of teenage girls are working the track—and there’s nothing athletic about it. “The Track” is the street nickname for the epicenter of underage prostitution in Oakland, where girls well under the age of eighteen strut down the street in platform heels and mini dresses while predatory pimps wait in cars around the corner.
At Tuesday night’s meeting, the Oakland City Council approved a major contractor to implement a municipal ID card system, almost a year and half after passing an ordinance allowing the city to issue the cards, and also voted to increase the number of cannabis producer permits in the city from four to eight.
Now that the ash has settled on California’s latest marijuana ballot initiatives, Oakland’s industrial cannabis policy—the nation’s first—can move forward, beginning with the city council’s meeting tonight.